We Will Be Heard
“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think,...
View ArticleThe Legal Right to Do Wrong
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the...
View ArticleAn Idea Whose Time Has Come
There is no force powerful enough to stem the tide of an idea whose time has come. We can no longer, in good conscience or in good health, continue to exploit animals for food, clothing, entertainment,...
View ArticleAre Anti-Cruelty Campaigns Really Effective?
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his...
View ArticleOccupy Humanity
In a rare interview just before his death, Aldous Huxley was asked what advice he would offer young people just starting out in life. He thought for a moment, smiled, and said that he was almost...
View ArticleThe Vegan Evolution
The-Vegan-Evolution-recording The vegan ethic embodies the most universal of spiritual and ethical aspirations – non-violence, harmlessness, reverence for life, and the cultivation of compassion...
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Another Chance
“The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago… had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.” ~Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923 From climate collapse to...
View ArticleThe Conscience: Our Guide to a Truly New Year
Living in a world of endless information, we are too often distracted from the steady stream of guidance coming to us from within. Even when faced with life-altering or affirming decisions, the voice...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to the Leaders of the Progressive Movement
Dear friends of truth and freedom, If the value of people was measured by how much they cared about other people, you would be among the top 1%. Not only because you respect the rights of others,...
View ArticleWhy?
Every human being is a complex, multi-layered conglomeration of genes, experiences, interests, opinions, beliefs, talents, skills, and rules for living that are uniquely different from all others. We...
View ArticleWhich Will We Choose?
We human beings are a complex, multi-faceted species. The consciousness that motivates us is a dichotomy in which a battle rages between the violent, angry, unreasonable, selfish, jealous, greedy,...
View ArticleParadise Bound
“Not in my eyes alone is Paradise”. Dante Nothing in human life, from birth all the way through to death, is even close to the way I would have designed it, had I been endowed with the omnipotence of...
View ArticleIf Not Now, When? If Not You, Who?
Have you ever been driving on a highway and come alongside a cattle truck? Or perhaps you’ve had the experience of going fishing and feeling a pang of sympathy for both the worms wriggling on the hooks...
View ArticleWhen Your Actions Create Victims
In four years as a vegan, I’m still grappling with the fact that I have yet to have a single authentic conversation with a non-vegan on the issue of using other animals. Those who choose veganism often...
View ArticleThe Vegan Inside Us
“We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson There is a part of human nature so tender, so vulnerable that we keep it closeted deep inside us, fearing it cannot...
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Speciesism and Veganism: Transcending Politics and Religion
Although this may come as a surprise to some, there are ethical vegans across the political spectrum and in every major religion. Veganism transcends politics and religion because it is based on the...
View ArticleThe Power is Ours
“Let him who would move the world, first move himself.” ~ Socrates As we ring out the old, tumultuous year that was 2014, it is tempting to bemoan the current state of the world, and the potential...
View ArticleIf We Were They
Of the more than seven billion people who are alive on this earth as I write, not one, as far as any of us knows, asked to be born. To the best of our recollection, each of us arrived in this crazy...
View ArticleA Saner Way
If we were to search throughout the history of human existence, in every nook and cranny on Planet Earth, we would not find one perfectly sane mind. Some form and degree of madness (in both senses of...
View ArticleBeing Vegan in a Speciesist World
“I found the minds of the people strangely indifferent to the subject of slavery. Their prejudices were invincible—stronger, if possible, than those of the slaveholders. Objections were started on...
View ArticleLet Your Conscience Be Your God
“Of all the creeds be taught or lands be trod, Man’s conscience is the oracle of God.” ~ Lord Byron … Of all the gods who have ruled the minds and hearts of human beings since they first appeared on...
View ArticleMother’s Milk
“All dairy operations, whether conventional or organic, exist solely by doing to millions of defenseless females the worst thing anyone can do to a mother.” – Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary Every year in...
View ArticleA Call to Ethical Vegetarians
A great many people become ethical vegetarians in response to a strong sense that animals shouldn’t be mistreated on factory farms, or that they simply should not be killed for food. However, many...
View ArticleCould You Kill An Animal?
A while back, I published a piece called Something Almost Primal, which discussed a disturbing trend in animal product marketing. This industry double-speak describes animal products as being ‘ethical’...
View ArticleThe Colored Entrance
Jazz singer Billie Holiday was one of the greatest female vocalists of her time. In 1948, Holiday sang to a sold-out crowd in Carnegie Hall. The venue broke its own record, with 2,700 tickets sold in...
View ArticleThe Importance of Being Vegan
“If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food.” – Leo Tolstoy … Intellectually, most of us agree that inflicting unnecessary harm is unjustified – whether...
View ArticleThe Power of Ahimsa
Ahimsa: this word means so much to some people, and so little to others. To me, Ahimsa is the most powerful word in the universe. Although Ahimsa, a word derived from Sanskrit, means “nonviolence” when...
View ArticleNo Innocent Bystanders
The following article appeared in the book Circles of Compassion: Essays Connecting Issues of Justice, a collection edited by Will Tuttle. Every year in New York City, thousands gather for a widely...
View ArticleThe Elephant in the Room
With every new year comes a new hope for attaining the elusive peace we all long for. It’s a time when many of us ask ourselves and one another why something so simple, so desperately needed, and so...
View ArticleThe Golden Rule
We have paired Angel and Craig’s collaborative essay with a 1.5 minute clip we found while searching our archives, which features Gentle World’s co-founder Sun, talking about how her understanding of...
View ArticleTaking Our Ethical Commitments Seriously
We often presume, without much thought, that we deserve the circumstances of our lives. But let’s consider this presumption. We didn’t choose to be born. We didn’t choose our parents, race, sex, mental...
View ArticleAn Irrefutable Truth
Before I became vegan, I felt that everything I knew could be refuted. My opinions could and would be challenged by anyone who knew better or whom I thought knew better. In those years – all through...
View ArticleSolstice
It was last year’s December that allowed me to at least begin to understand the significance of the winter solstice, as it might have been experienced by those who once celebrated it en masse:...
View ArticleAs We Should Be
The light of veganism is spreading. As a near 50 year vegan, I am amazed that a concept virtually unknown even a decade ago, could become the new evolutionary paradigm known throughout the world. In...
View ArticleDon’t Tell Me What To Do
The following is intended to be a satire. It is an ironic look at some of the things people say when attempting to dismiss concerns about the ethics of using animals for personal gain. When these same...
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I Will Not Give Up
I have been vegan for 10 years (and vegetarian for seven years prior to that). I became vegan for the animals as I believe that all animals have a right to live their lives free from fear and...
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A Life Without Violence
Have you ever dreamed of freedom, justice and, overall, a life without violence, discrimination and hatred? This has been a question I have constantly asked myself from a very young age. As a woman...
View ArticleThe Conceptual Lens of Anthropocentrism
Language is the primary tool through which we express ourselves – our emotions, our thoughts, our interpretations of reality. Yet the language available to us influences what we can express and, more...
View ArticleThere Will Be Battlefields
While many face the season of “peace on earth” deeply saddened by recent global events, it’s hard not to wonder why we humans still can’t manage to connect the dots when it comes to the violence on the...
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